Dr. Jan Auernhammer

Lecturer in Strategy, Operations and Innovation
Centre for Social Informatics 

Contact details
Room: 1/51, Craiglockhart Campus
Tel: +44 (0) 131 455 4718
Email: j.auernhammer@napier.ac.uk 

Twitter: @JanAuernhammer / Web page: www.freiraum-theory.com

Qualifications

Ph.D. in Innovation Management

Diplom-Wirtschaftsinformatiker (FH) [Business information systems]

Honours B.Sc. in Computing.

Areas of Expertise
- Creativity and Innovation: Design thinking, individual and team creativity, organisational innovation capabilities, open innovation and co-creation

- Strategy and Operations: Organisational capabilities (mental, social, regulatory, technological), contextual influences in business processes

 - Organisational theory: Organisation as an entity, organisation as a process, organisation as self-reproducing systems (autopoiesis)

- System theory: Open system theory, complex and emergent systems and autopoietic organisation theory,

- Research methodology: Pragmatism, hard and soft system modelling, pattern analysis (pattern language), theory of space (production of space)

- Information technology management: System design and architecture, socio-technical systems (social informatics), business process management and business intelligence systems

Brief Biography

Dr. Jan Auernhammer is a Lecturer at the School of Management at Edinburgh Napier University Business School. His latest research activities are the investigation of creativity and innovation in organisations. He is a member of the Social Informatics research group. His main research interests are creativity and idea management, social network systems in organisations, organisational creativity, innovation capabilities, organisational systems and business development.

Jan developed in his Ph.D. (in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz Cars and Trucks) a new model (Freiraum model), which supports producing the context in organisations in which individuals and teams can be creative and the overall organisations can establish innovative products, services, processes and business concepts (Business innovation).

The title of his thesis is: "Autopoietic organisation of Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation - An case study of the automotive manufacturer Daimler AG."

In his past, he worked for DaimlerChrylser AG in Stuttgart, Germany (now Daimler AG and Chrysler LLC) and DaimlerChrysler South East Asia Pte Ltd in Singapore in several positions. In his time at DaimlerChrylser AG he was part of several teams including global product management, business development and IT management, which develop a global reporting system, e-commerce parts system, regional business intelligence system, regional marketing strategy and global quality system.

He developed and delivered several creativity and innovation seminars in organisations such as Daimler AG, Germany and Volvo AB, Sweden. Furthermore, he is a co-founder and managing director of a start-up business that allows small family businesses to sell internationally.  

In his teaching, he incorporates creativity and design thinking principles to educate students to be able to create and develop solutions, prototypes and concepts to the context of the problem at hand. He combines the process of design thinking (and its principles) with key principles of creativity.

To find more about Jan’s research and teaching approach, please follow him on Twitter: @JanAuernhammer 

Publications

Auernhammer J. M. (2010) The system of organisational learning and creativity to facilitate the innovative organisation, Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative Industries Conference. (second price award)

Auernhammer J. M. (2010) The system of organisational learning and creativity to facilitate the innovative organisation, Edinburgh Napier University Business Research Conference (first price award)

Auernhammer, J. M. (2009) The management of organisational learning and organisational creativity to foster the innovative organisation, Edinburgh Napier University Business School Conference,

Auernhammer, J. M. (2008) The management of organisational learning, knowledge creation and creativity, Edinburgh Napier University Business School Conference

Auernhammer, J. M. (2007) Collaborative business management enabled. by IS/ICT to improve management productivity, Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative Industries Conference.